Senior guard Jacob Shaffer’s primary task Monday against Alton Marquette was to defend the area’s leading scorer. Shaffer not only played a key role in holding Deion Lavender to six points, he led the Kahoks in scoring, rebounds and assists in a 57-52 win.
Image by Roger Starkey
Lavender entered the game averaging 28.2 points on the season. Collinsville’s defensive strategy was to force the ball out of the 6-foot-4 guard’s hands as much as possible using a diamond press and box-and-one half-court defense, Collinsville Head Coach Darin Lee. Shaffer was assigned to shadow Lavender – who finished 3-13 from the floor.
Shaffer knocked down a trio of 3-pointers and made three key fourth-quarter free throws on his way to a game-high 16 points. The 6-foot-1 guard snagged a team-high six rebounds and tied for the team lead with three assists.
Alton Marquette (11-4) sagged down on the Kahoks big men, a common defensive strategy employed against Collinsville (7-10), which has three players 6-foot-5 or taller. The Kahoks guards made the Explorers pay, hitting 10-20 from 3-point range.
Lee said the ability to score from beyond the arc has been a key to his team’s success this year. “We have shot them well in games we’ve won and we haven’t shot them so well in games we lost,” Lee said.
The Kahoks made eight 3-pointers in the first half, on their way to a 44-40 lead at the intermission. Anfirnee Wilkinson, Brett Langley and Jamal Wellmaker combined to make five 3-pointers in the second quarter, to account for all of the team’s points. Wellmaker’s three was the seldom-used guards first of the season. Wilkinson, Langley and Shaffer each made three shots from beyond the arc in the game.
Ben Sebacher’s 16 points led Alton Marquette. He entered the game averaging 1.3 points per game. Stephen Peuterbaugh, who was averaging 3.5 points on the season, scored 13 for the Explorers.
Lee said Sebacher and Peuterbaugh were the beneficiaries of the acute attention paid to Lavender and some breakdowns in the press. “We were concentrating on Lavender, so you’re going to leave a few guys open,” Lee said.
The Kahoks knocked down 7-9 fourth-quarter free throws to salt the game away.
The Collinsville scorers were: Shaffer-16, Langely-14, Wilkinson-11, Wethers-8, Wellmaker-3, Rickman-3, Davis-2.
Collinsville plays Cahokia at 6 p.m. Wednesday in their third of four games at the Jerseyville Tournament.
Game Notes:
Collinsville shot 19-46 (41.3 percent) from the floor and 9-14 (64.3 percent) from the free throw line. Alton Marquette was 23-56 (41.1 percent) from the field and 3-6 from the free throw line. The Explorers shot only 21.4 percent (3-14) from beyond the arc. Collinsville held a 33-31 rebounding advantage. Each team turned the ball over 13 times.
